Asian elephant stuns scientists with self-showering

An Asian elephant at Berlin Zoo has gained notoriety by working out how to use a hose to take morning showers. The elephant in question is named Mary, and her antics were so unusual that they have been featured in the journal Current Biology. Elephants have been described as using tools for many years now, but these incidences were mostly anecdotal. Now, however, comes an opportunity to perform a long term study on what makes an elephant’s tool brain tick. Lena Kaufmann at the Humboldt University of Berlin has been telling my colleague Chris Smith all about it…

Lena - So it was kind of a lucky finding for me. I've been working at the zoo for over three years now doing behavioural experiments and observations with the elephants there. And I was there in the morning tagging along with the morning routine that the elephant caretakers have with the elephants. And they shower the elephants every morning. It's important for their skincare as well. There was this one keeper who sometimes just hands this one female elephant Mary the water hose when he's done with showering her a little bit, and he just lets her basically shower herself with it. And I just saw her really, it seemed like, very aimfully showering herself. And I immediately recognised that that was something very, very interesting and special.

Chris - Effectively, the hose is becoming a tool in her, I won't say hands, but in her trunk. She's using a tool in order to affect an outcome, which is getting a wash, which is something she wants.

Lena - Exactly, yes. So their trunks are very, very dextrous. So their trunk tip is often compared to a human hand. As to the goal, I would say it's body care definitely, but probably also partially comfort behaviour. Elephants love to spray themselves with water as well, so that's an important part of their behavioural repertoire.

Chris - We knew that elephants used tools though, didn't we? We already knew that they were quite familiar with using their trunk to pick things up, manipulating things, and then doing things with the things they pick up. So what does this add to our understanding?

Lena - Our study would be the first, or one of the first cases, of really like a long-term empirical study on elephant tool use and in addition with also the specialty of the type of tool she's using. I think it's a very fascinating new finding that we made. Also, we have this suggestion that of course it's speculation that maybe water hoses might be tools that elephants can understand intuitively in a way because they're kind of similar to the trunks, right? And they use their trunks to shower themselves and to spray water.

Chris - How do you think she would've learned to do this in the first place? Can they watch other individuals? Because we know that many animals socially learn, they watch another animal do something and that's how they pick it up. So would she have watched the keeper and then thought, 'well, I could do that'. Is that what you think the steps probably were?

Lena - It might be a possibility that just the basic understanding of you can use a water hose, you can hold it and use it for something might have come from humans, but it would require very specific cognitive abilities and a very high understanding of another individual, of another species, right? From an elephant's perspective to understand what a human is doing. So we would have to look into it more.

Chris - Nevertheless. You do also go on to say in the paper about the fact that another elephant, I want to say, gets the hump <laugh> and seems to intervene. So they're, they're obviously watching what each other are doing because the other elephant that comes in tries to stop Mary having a shower.

Lena - Exactly. Yeah. So the younger female that's standing next to Mary, she, at some point she started intervening with the showering. And we're not sure of what exactly her goal, the aim of these interventions was. But one idea would be that she's actually maybe trying to stop the water flow potentially. So at some point, she was able to reach the water hose that was going to the showering Mary, and she started pulling it towards her and then actually clamping it in a way with her trunk, like really changing her grip and then just pressing it. And that as a result of this, the water flow to Mary stops sometimes actually.

Chris - Was this to elicit a reaction on the part of Mary to get the other elephant's attention? Or was it to provoke? Or was it because the elephant is genuinely intrigued about how the hose works and by squeezing it and seeing the water stopping, that is actually part of the learning process?

Lena - So we're not sure if she really was trying to get a reaction or to stop the water flow to Mary. It's also possible that she was playing with the hose. One theory that the elephant caretakers at the zoo have is that it feels good to grab the water hose because of the vibrations that the water pressure inside is creating. So when you clamp the water hose basically and you stop water flow, there must be strong vibrations and elephant trunks are highly sensitive, especially to touch, basically. So it might also be just an interesting behaviour that might be some play behaviour involved there, but it's a possibility that she was trying to stop the waterfall.

Chris - Having made these observations and got this lovely footage on your phone and published the findings in the journal, what are the take home messages?

Lena - I would say that we definitely need more long-term empirical studies on elephant cognition and behaviour such as this one. And then also that this is an exceptional case due to the complexity of the tool that Mary's using. And also the way she's applying it, it's an exceptional case of elephant tool use.